urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights - Tags - appinfra Technology trends+ discussions on the IBM System z, the IBM Mainframe and the software that runs on it222015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00IBM Connections - Blogsurn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-09a8064f-1bc8-499f-93c5-7c4e30731c3fWhat else is possible? - Part 3 : Quality Data & TPFPratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-09-30T05:30:14-04:002014-10-01T01:59:33-04:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
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<strong>By Craig Riegelhaupt, </strong></p>
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<strong>IBM Product Line Manager - EPS Industries .</strong></p>
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Airline food is now available for <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2014/09/22/airline-food-now-available-for-home-delivery/" target="_blank">home&nbsp;delivery</a>.&nbsp; Yes, you heard that correctly. <img alt="image" height="167" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/AirlineFood.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: right;" width="234" />&nbsp; That cheese and cracker plate complete with plastic knife, that probably is softer than the pillow provided (at a charge of course), &lsquo;enjoyed&rsquo; at 30,000 feet, can now be delivered straight to your home!&nbsp; Now, personally, I don&rsquo;t think I can ever recall finishing my airline meal, and thinking to myself, &ldquo;wow, that made the 2 hour security line and 3.5 hour flight delay well worth it!&rdquo;&nbsp; But, maybe I am different than most.&nbsp;</p>
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Airlines and their partners are continuously looking for new services and solutions to increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately, the bottom line &ndash; with so far, mixed success.&nbsp; I personally commend the approach and effort; it is necessary to continuously reinvent and focus on innovation to stay relevant, especially in the airline industry.&nbsp; But, what happens if the IT applications that support these new services and offerings aren&rsquo;t in sync with the data centers flush with customer data and transactions?&nbsp; Not only will airlines not be able to direct the right promotions to the appropriate customer, but, even more importantly, systems will experience disruption and downtime due to needed application upgrades and modernization.&nbsp; (For a good read on the importance of minimizing downtime check out my other blog <a href="https://www.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/entry/are_you_prepared?lang=en_us" target="_blank">here</a>).</p>
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In a 2013 SITA study, <span style="color:black;">62% of Airlines view system incompatibility and data integration as a significant challenge, with nearly the same amount viewing insufficient data standards as a significant challenge.&nbsp; IBM TPF has been raising the level of programming to business level objects, keeping systems modular, flexible and extensible.&nbsp; What does this mean for airlines?&nbsp; Integration with standards based business definitions to expose legacy rich data to new technologies for increased operational efficiency and application agility.</span></p>
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<span style="color:black;"><span style="width: 100%; display: inline-block;"><span style="width: 100%; display: inline-block;"><span style="width: 100%; display: inline-block;"><a href="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/SystemzSoftware-TPF.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/SystemzSoftware-TPF.jpg" style=" width:100%; display:block; margin: 1em 0pt 0pt 0pt; float: right;" /></a></span></span></span></span></p>
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<span style="color:black;">&quot;The requirement for good quality data from within the organization and from linked stakeholders will be the key driver for transformation.&quot; (</span><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/tknierim/smart-thinking-white-paper" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:none;"><span style="color:blue;">SITA&nbsp;2014&nbsp;Air&nbsp;Transport&nbsp;Industry&nbsp;Insight,&nbsp;Smart&nbsp;Thinking</span></span></a><span style="color:black;">)&nbsp; Good quality data, especially when discussing airlines, lies in one place &ndash; IBM TPF.&nbsp; With support for upgraded open source standards, and an object oriented interface to z/TPF, IBM provides the tools necessary for airlines to succeed with new ancillary offerings by integrating the applications that support them with the database facility that the industry has come to rely on for over 40 years.</span></p>
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<span style="color:black;">Now, with the closing of my 3-part &lsquo;What else is Possible&rdquo; series, I implore you to think about how your organization can leverage the technology you already have in place to become more customer centric, mobile and agile.&nbsp; Go ahead, order up the kosher meal for home delivery in the meantime &ndash; it will be a lot easier to work with the bagel using a real knife.</span></p>
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<span style="color:black;">To learn more visit the </span><a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/products/en/ztransaction-processing-facility" target="_blank">TPF&nbsp;Website</a> or contact your <a href="mailto:vanminde@us.ibm.com" target="_blank">TPF&nbsp;Client&nbsp;Support&nbsp;Rep</a>.</p>
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By Craig Riegelhaupt,
IBM Product Line Manager - EPS Industries .
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Airline food is now available for home&nbsp;delivery .&nbsp; Yes, you heard that correctly. &nbsp; That cheese and...001000urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-8efe99c8-881b-44a1-adff-ba5f311cf85aHow Smart is your Infrastructure?Pratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-09-25T07:59:40-04:002014-09-25T08:04:27-04:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/SandeepPerumbuduri.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/SandeepPerumbuduri.jpg" style=" display:block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" /></a></p>
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<strong>By Sandeep Perumbuduri</strong>,</p>
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<strong>Software Developer - zAnalytics,Smart Cloud Analytics team</strong></p>
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Lots of people are talking about Cloud and smarter infrastructure these days. There is a&nbsp; noise and hype about the possibilities and the savings that can be realized around public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, etc. Since our software brand is named Cloud and Smarter Infrastructure, I&#39;ll try to shine a little light on the subject. Let me also offer a point of view around our recent announcement of new IBM Infrastructure Management Suite for z/VM and Linux.</p>
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While working with several clients, we observed that IaaS solutions need to be built on a solid base. Something that provides insights at both the hypervisor and the operating system levels. Couple it with configuration of the environment that understands the relationships. A relationship between server, storage, networking, and the virtual servers that share the infrastructure (increasingly in a much more dynamic manner) and you can appreciate that complexity is more often the rule than the exception.</p>
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In addition, we in the System z space recognize that hypervisor management and reducing the complexity to configure &amp; manage the virtual environment is a key capability. Therefore, the inclusion of the new IBM WAVE product is no accident. Whether you&#39;re setting up Single System Image Clusters or Live Guest Relocation, you&#39;ll want to leverage it&#39;s powerful GUI to make your system administrators both much more productive and reduce the chances for error using today&#39;s best practices. <span style="font-style: normal">This suite provides a </span><font color="#031227"><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal"> single offering to monitor and manage z/VM and Linux on System z guests, plus support for backup and recovery of the entire system.</span></span></font></font></p>
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You&#39;ll also notice there&#39;s no accident in the similarity of the software components in our new Enterprise Cloud Server (ECS) and this new Infrastructure Suite. ECS includes our Cloud Orchestration solution which is the icing on the Cloud cake to complete the picture. Automate the provisioning of those workloads which are most suitable to run on the System Z platform and start managing the lifecycle &ndash; on top of the world&#39;s most secure and efficient hypervisor z/VM - which is now fully integrated with the OpenStack APIs.</p>
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You can visit <a href="https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/W9b511b099ded_4e32_abfb_ed8ce4da5b17" target="_blank">Service&nbsp;Management&nbsp;Connect&nbsp;</a> to learn more and read about all the System z solutions that are available. It will provide a comprehensive framework for you to base your &#39;enterprise service management&#39; solution architecture around.</p>
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By Sandeep Perumbuduri ,
Software Developer - zAnalytics,Smart Cloud Analytics team
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Lots of people are talking about Cloud and smarter infrastructure these days. There is a&nbsp; noise and hype...001344urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-dc0197b6-9a02-4675-8ca5-cc19f104cda3Are you prepared?Pratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-09-08T06:15:56-04:002014-09-12T02:21:26-04:00<p dir="ltr">
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<strong>By Craig Riegelhaupt,</strong></p>
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<strong>IBM Product Line Manager - EPS Industries .</strong></p>
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What would you do if your IT systems went down right now?&nbsp; Are you prepared?</p>
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A little over a year ago, the financial services and banking community was ground to a halt when a &ldquo;technical glitch&rdquo; stopped trading in all NASDAQ securities for three hours.&nbsp; To put this in perspective, the NASDAQ dollar volume is about $50 billion in a single day!</p>
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What about planned outages for system upgrades?&nbsp; Are your customers prepared?</p>
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According to Coleman Parkes research, 48% of companies believe downtime negatively impacts their brand and reputation. I am sure we all experienced one of those moments when you see or hear of something new, and wonder why it took so long to create it, and how it could not exist already.&nbsp; Well, I recently had one of those moments, and just writing about it wouldn&rsquo;t do it justice.&nbsp; So, sit back, relax, and watch this short video:</p>
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<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/MwemcRXcA-Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
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Lifeline is not an all-or-nothing solution. Lifeline allows CIOs to pursue a gradual, incremental approach to HA/DR that focuses on the most critical workloads first.</p>
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Check out <a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/products/en/network-lifeline" target="_blank">IBM&nbsp;Multi-site&nbsp;Workload&nbsp;Lifeline</a> to learn more, or contact your sales rep to get started.&nbsp; The cost of being prepared for an unexpected downtime, or greatly reducing a planned one, is a lot less expensive than the alternative.</p>
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By Craig Riegelhaupt,
IBM Product Line Manager - EPS Industries .
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What would you do if your IT systems went down right now?&nbsp; Are you prepared?
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A little over...001369urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-52c49e6a-42d1-49d2-8f66-0a75c1d6ec12What else is possible? - Part 2 : Mobilize TPFPratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-08-26T08:08:35-04:002014-08-27T02:54:58-04:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
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<strong>By Craig Riegelhaupt, </strong></p>
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<strong>IBM Product Line Manager - EPS Industries . </strong></p>
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I still recall the first time I saw someone go through the airport security line with their electronic boarding pass.&nbsp; There I was, with my shoes in hand, my computer bag already unzipped for easy laptop removal and my boarding pass and license in my left&hellip;or was it my right, pants pocket.&nbsp; The teenager in front of me of course thought the announcement indicating everyone be ready for your turn at the front of the line did not apply to him, as he stood there checking his text messages on his phone instead of having his papers in hand.</p>
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I was next in line; I looked down at my papers to make sure I had the right boarding pass of my journey out of my pocket, and by the time I looked up, the teenager was already loading his headphones into its own tray at the security table.&nbsp; What just happened?</p>
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We&rsquo;ve all (well at least those who read technology blogs) heard how mobile is taking over the world, and I am sure if Marc Andreessen wrote his WSJ op-ed piece today, he probably would re-title it &ldquo;How Mobile is Eating the World.&rdquo;&nbsp; By 2016, the SITA Airline IT trends survey predicts mobile services to be everywhere, with 60% of airlines planning new mobile services; mobile will extend across the entire airline journey.&nbsp; But let&rsquo;s draw this back from the consumer a little bit and think about the data and transactions that these new mobile services draw from and create.&nbsp;</p>
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Mobile is the next evolution for connecting to the data center, and it is changing the way information is used.&nbsp; But understanding <em>who</em> the user is, and adding simpler communication protocol, is required to open existing applications and business logic to mobile workloads.&nbsp; By unlocking TPF data, and opening access to that data, IBM is providing airlines with the tooling to increase mobile efficiencies while enhancing mobile security.&nbsp;</p>
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As airlines look to cut costs, and drive revenues through new customer-centric services, it would just be good business to unlock the data within TPF - the transaction system responsible for the majority of all airline travel &ndash; for organizational mobile imperatives.&nbsp; The graphic below is just an example of the types of efficiencies and additional lines of revenue that are waiting to be uncovered through TPF mobile integration.&nbsp; The airline industry is on the right track &ndash; or runway shall we say &ndash; with current and planned mobile initiatives, but we are only on the first leg of the journey.</p>
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<a href="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/Whatelsepossible.jpg" style="width: 100%; display: inline-block;" target="_blank"><img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/Whatelsepossible.jpg" style=" width:100%; display:block; margin: 0 auto;text-align: center;" /></a></p>
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The airlines that learn how to adapt and leverage their back-end systems to truly exploit their data available for mobile will be the next leaders in air travel.&nbsp; By moving beyond e-tickets and asking, &lsquo;What else is possible?&rsquo; tomorrow&rsquo;s airlines can open the door to a truly full mobile journey.</p>
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Click on the <a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/products/en/ztransaction-processing-facility" target="_blank">TPF&nbsp;Website</a> to learn more or contact your <a href="mailto:vanminde@us.ibm.com" target="_blank">TPF&nbsp;Client&nbsp;Support&nbsp;Rep</a> to learn more.</p>
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By Craig Riegelhaupt,
IBM Product Line Manager - EPS Industries .
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I still recall the first time I saw someone go through the airport security line with their electronic boarding pass.&nbsp;...002218urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-ef61e1e2-fe6c-442a-a4a0-a0e836f6ce31How Design Thinking Doubled My ImpactPratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-06-11T07:28:49-04:002014-06-12T07:45:05-04:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
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<strong>Senior Technical Staff Member - Architecture and Design for Enterprise Networking Solutions (ENS).</strong></p>
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I recently presented at the IBM Impact 2014 Conference in Las Vegas. &nbsp;I want to take this opportunity to share a valuable lesson I learned during my short time at Impact 2014.</p>
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Before I divulge what I discovered, let me tell you a story about a couple of items that helped influence how I approached my presentation. &nbsp;</p>
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I recently participated in several meetings with the IBM CICS team, where they provided feedback on a design mini-camp a group of their designers attended.&nbsp; The intent of the mini-camp was to better understand the <a href="http://www.ibm.com/design" target="_blank">IBM&nbsp;Design&nbsp;Thinking&nbsp;principles</a>.&nbsp; I had been introduced last year to some of these concepts, such as hills, sponsors, and playbacks, while I was helping another area with their disaster recovery plans. Recently, the CICS team took our Enterprise Networking Solutions design team through much more detail and explained the rationale behind the methodology.</p>
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One of the key takeaways I learned from these meetings is about changing the way we, as an organization, describe our new functions and products.&nbsp; As software designers, we tend to be focusing on the task when describing what our new function comprises, rather than focusing on the end user experience brought about by using this new function.&nbsp; By changing the focus, not only does it allow designers and developers to continue to deliver these new functions and products, but it also allows sales to better understand what the product does, and enables customers to relate to their own experiences.</p>
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Another takeaway was to be careful with overuse of words or catch-phrases.&nbsp; An obvious example for me is &ldquo;cloud&rdquo;.&nbsp; With everyone claiming they have cloud offerings, the same story is being told, so no one is differentiating themselves, and customers start tuning out. &nbsp;The way to set your product apart is to tell a better story.&nbsp; Customers don&rsquo;t just want to sit there listening to you tell them how great something is, they want to see it and experience it.</p>
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This got me thinking about a session I presented last year at Impact titled &ldquo;Continuous Availability with GDPS Active/Active Sites&rdquo; at Impact. &nbsp;The presentation described the existing disaster recovery solutions as well as went into technical details on the components that make up GDPS Active/Active Sites, with a focus on <a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/products/en/network-lifeline" target="_blank">Multi-site&nbsp;Workload&nbsp;Lifeline</a>. &nbsp;Maybe the title wasn&rsquo;t the most powerful way to describe the true &ldquo;wow&rdquo; of this solution. The session was in a very good, early afternoon time slot, and attendance was satisfactory.&nbsp; However, there was minimal discussion during the session and did not generate any customer interest from those in attendance.&nbsp;</p>
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Armed with the new design thinking and focusing on the end user experience by telling a better story, I contemplated what I could do differently with this year&rsquo;s Impact presentation. &nbsp;I was immediately handicapped with a poor time slot, the last session of the day. &nbsp;This was going to be a challenge; it was quite possible that few would attend at that late hour of the day. &nbsp;That would have been disappointing since I had made the long trip to Las Vegas to deliver just this one session!</p>
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I started by changing the session title to &ldquo;<strong>How one customer reduced their planned outage time by 90%!</strong>&rdquo;.&nbsp; This seemed to grab customers&rsquo; attention, as a few people walking down the hall to see what was being presented next in each conference room, turned in for this session.&nbsp; Also, rather than give a detailed, technical discussion of the components that the customer used to achieve this reduction in planned outage time, I &ldquo;told a story&rdquo; about the challenges this customer had with elongated outages during planned maintenance activities, the steps they took to accomplish their goals, and the products, including Multi-site Workload Lifeline, they used that helped them achieve this reduction.&nbsp;</p>
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Despite the time slot, there was double the number of attendees compared to last year&rsquo;s session! Even better, there was plenty of good discussion throughout the presentation, and several customers stayed well after the session to relate their current challenges to me and whether they could reach a similar result that this customer had achieved.&nbsp; It has currently led to several customers expressing a strong interest in pursuing the technology that Multi-site Workload Lifeline provides.</p>
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So I now have first-hand experience with how changing the description of a new function or product and directly relating them to a customer&rsquo;s own experiences helps tell a better story for our customers.&nbsp; Thank you, IBM Design Thinking! &nbsp;I&rsquo;m looking forward to my next experience to shape and deliver a story that helps convey the value of our solutions to our clients.&nbsp; See you in Vegas next time!</p>
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By Michael Fitzpatrick,
Senior Technical Staff Member - Architecture and Design for Enterprise Networking Solutions (ENS).
&nbsp;
I recently presented at the IBM Impact 2014 Conference in...002634urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-3fd566e1-0d9e-468d-880d-0041be0fe3e6Impact 2014 - Day 1 for System z and SoftwareJacqui Shawleyjax@uk.ibm.com100000KTTBactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-04-28T18:01:35-04:002014-04-29T06:38:36-04:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/meapril2014.JPG" target="_blank"><img alt="image" height="117" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/meapril2014.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" width="107" /></a></p>
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<strong>Jax Shawley , </strong></p>
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<strong>Global Market Manager - System z Software marketing</strong>.</p>
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There&rsquo;s always something exciting about the first day of a major IBM conference , The anticipation of what you know will be some great announcements</p>
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The knowledge that you&rsquo;ll hear not only from IBM, but some leading edge clients who are leveraging latest IBM and Business partner technologies. The buzz you get when surrounded by so many passionate and focused people from all around the world .</p>
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<a href="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/Cloudmarketplace.JPG" target="_blank"><img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/Cloudmarketplace.JPG" style=" width:200px; display:block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" /></a></p>
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For me , today&rsquo;s opening day has certainly been no exception , and hearing the announcement on IBM Cloud Marketplace launching services for Big Data Analytics , Mobile and Security &nbsp;which will really enable clients to easily build upon and integrate their systems of record, harnessing the power of the core information and data that reside on the mainframe middleware stack certainly created a lot of noise .</p>
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As the main tent session ended, key breakouts that I joined &nbsp;offered standing room only as many attendees like me wanted to find out more and this years &nbsp;Impact certainly has more content than ever to show the importance of the CICS and WebSphere z/OS in the ecosystem that many of our clients now run .</p>
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<a href="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/GaryBsrnett.JPG" target="_blank"><img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/GaryBsrnett.JPG" style=" width:200px; display:block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" /></a></p>
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I attended the CICS track opening this afternoon , and was reminded &nbsp;just how critical to so many organisations this flagship product is &ndash; and just how vibrant &ndash; as it is central to many businesses as they take their key transactional based applications and open them up , with Worklight , to a Mobile business strategy. Gary Barnett, a principal analyst from Ovum added his commentary and weight to the story .</p>
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<a href="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/EXPO.JPG" target="_blank"><img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/EXPO.JPG" style=" width:200px; display:block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" /></a></p>
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As this year is the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the &nbsp;mainframe , the innovation across System z software &nbsp;is front and foremost as IBM demonstrates it&rsquo;s leadership . And is a reminder that all things can be made possible on a mainframe &ndash; from Air traffic control systems, through ATMs , barcodes, weather modelling and the smart car . With all this buzz around the vibrancy of the IBM Mainframe&nbsp; the Infrastructure Matter booth on the EXPO&nbsp; has been&nbsp; packed with customers and partners wanting to know more .</p>
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so much more to come at Impact 2014 !!</p>
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&nbsp;
Jax Shawley ,
Global Market Manager - System z Software marketing .
&nbsp;
There&rsquo;s always something exciting about the first day of a major IBM conference , The anticipation of what you know will...001076urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-b0f68619-aa81-4ce1-adb2-4af5ed35dc6cConnecting mobile and cloud to the world's dataPratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-04-25T09:11:36-04:002014-04-25T09:11:36-04:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/JamesMulvey.jpg" style=" display:block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" /></p>
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<strong>By James Mulvey,</strong></p>
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<strong>Software Architect - IBM Websphere Application Server for z/OS</strong>.</p>
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<span style="color:black;">It&#39;s been said that 80% of the world&#39;s data resides on or originates on a mainframe.&nbsp; That&#39;s a lot of data!&nbsp; And making that data and business assets more accessible to your customers and employees directly translates to new business opportunities and competitive advantage.</span></p>
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<span style="color:black;">WebSphere Application Server (WAS) for z/OS has been delivering capabilities to allow reliable and fast access to data on the mainframe for many years.&nbsp; A good deal of the world&#39;s largest companies have built mission critical applications that rely on the qualities of service provided by the unique combination of IBM System z, z/OS and WAS.&nbsp; And our WebSphere team has constantly worked to push the envelope of innovation, delivering essential features to WAS such as WebSphere Optimized Local Adapters (WOLA), which provides fast and secure in-memory connector technology between your business applications in WAS and the mainframe data contained in CICS, IMS and batch on z/OS.&nbsp; In June of 2012 our team delivered the Liberty profile for z/OS, a lightweight and fast application server, built on the same WAS code base, but designed to only run with the features needed for your application, resulting in an agile yet powerful application server.&nbsp; In fact, just the kind of application server that is built for mobile and cloud workloads.</span></p>
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<span style="color:black;">So how does WebSphere continue to improve in this space?&nbsp; Well, Tuesday April 22nd was a significant step in that evolution.&nbsp; That was the day that IBM <a href="http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/4/897/ENUS214-204/index.html&amp;lang=en&amp;request_locale=en" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:none;"><span style="color:blue;">announced&nbsp;</span></span></a>the availability of new features designed to make the connections from mobile and cloud applications to the world&#39;s data hosted on the mainframe easier than ever before.&nbsp; <strong>WebSphere Liberty z/OS Connect</strong> is built on the Liberty profile and provides a secure and simple way to discover and invoke applications and data on z/OS from web, cloud, and mobile applications.&nbsp; The technology uses standardized interfaces and data, including RESTful services and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), so it is simple to integrate into existing SOA environments.&nbsp; Also new in the announcement is that the Liberty profile on z/OS now adds WOLA support for high-performance and bi-directional calling to and from applications running in Liberty on z/OS, as well as those in traditional z/OS environments, such as CICS Transaction Server, z/OS batch, and UNIX System Services.</span></p>
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<span style="color:black;">These new WebSphere on z/OS features make it extremely easy to expose mainframe applications and data to the worlds of mobile and cloud, and do so in way that is secure, fast and consistent.&nbsp; To learn more about these, and many other, exciting new WebSphere capabilities I encourage you to join me at Impact 2014 in Las Vegas from April 27 through May 1.&nbsp; I will be presenting sessions on WAS on z/OS, WOLA, and the Liberty profile including z/OS Connect.&nbsp; You can also find me in Meet the Experts sessions, at the WebSphere on z Pedestal at the Solution EXPO, and as a panel member in a WebSphere on z client session (#1541) on Tuesday morning at 10:30.</span></p>
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<span style="color:black;">Stay tuned for more information in future posts, and I look forward to seeing you at Impact 2014.</span></p>
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<span style="color:black;">Register for Impact at <a href="http://www.ibm.com/impact" target="_blank">http://www.ibm.com/impact</a></span>, and check out all that is happening for System z at Impact at <a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/impact/" target="_blank">http://www.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/impact/</a>.</p>
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By James Mulvey,
Software Architect - IBM Websphere Application Server for z/OS .
&nbsp;
It&#39;s been said that 80% of the world&#39;s data resides on or originates on a mainframe.&nbsp;...001488urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-9dd96fb4-48c1-424d-94af-203bee535aaeSolving the agility-stability paradox, Decision Management on z/OSPratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-04-24T08:25:05-04:002014-04-24T08:30:09-04:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/ChrisBackhouse.jpg" style=" display:block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" /></p>
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<strong>By Chris Backhouse,</strong></p>
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<strong>IBM Operational Decision Manager for z/OS</strong>.</p>
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<span style="color:black;">So unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of months, I am sure you can&rsquo;t help but have seen that the mainframe is celebrating its 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary. It&rsquo;s slightly sobering to think that even though I&rsquo;ve spent my entire career working on and around the mainframe, I am still a significant way off that particular milestone &hellip;&hellip; or at least that&rsquo;s what I keep telling myself! So how is it that the mainframe is still able to be the vital component in so many of our enterprise applications and what do we need to do to ensure it&rsquo;s able to stay there.</span></p>
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One of the key challenges we face with our mainframe applications is the seemingly contradictory demands to be both stable and agile. Stability is a key requirement for our z/OS applications which are at the heart of our business. Very often we have multiple business applications, from multiple channels that all converge on our z/OS systems making the requirement for five nines availability a genuine reality for many businesses. This contrasts against the fact that an organization&rsquo;s success largely depends upon its ability to respond quickly to today&rsquo;s complex, ever-changing markets and regulatory climate. For example, a company&rsquo;s ability to change product or service features or to implement new pricing models to meet or beat the competition is a key differentiator in ensuring business success.</p>
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Many organizations today have their business policies and business rules automated across their solution embedded within IT artefacts that were developed over the course of years or, for us on the mainframe, even decades. As these software assets mature, they tend to become increasingly complex, making them difficult for a person to comprehend. As the application becomes less transparent, the question of how quickly a change can take place becomes an issue. Identifying the exact change required for the business without affecting the other pieces that are embedded in a large complex solution can develop into a real inhibitor to keeping the business agile. Also any changes we make in these intricate systems have the potential to upset their stability.</p>
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So how can we handle these paradoxical requirements? Generally the majority of our application changes are to amendment the implementation of these business policies. These can often be minor changes but ones which have major consequences that often result in the need to regression test the whole application. One solution to this problem is to implement a Decision Management system. The role of a decision management system is to create an agile responsive solution through the identification and externalization of the business rules that are the implementation of the business policies within the solution. When business rules are managed on a separate lifecycle to the IT artefacts, a required rule change can be assessed, implemented and tested in a much shorter time frame, as the impact of a rule change can more easily be identified and tested. Moreover if the changes we are making are isolated to the externalised code, the remaining application code has the possibility of becoming more stable as it will be changing far less frequently.</p>
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Managing business rules throughout the decision life cycle requires more than just authoring, testing and deployment of rules for a specific business area. Equally important is effective management of changes to decision after they have been deployed to achieve time and cost savings. A decision management should effectively and efficiently deliver full life cycle management for the rules within a business decision.</p>
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At IBM our offering in this area is IBM Operational Decision Manger. This is an offering that provides a full suite of capabilities to author, execute, manage, test and maintain the business decisions that are critical to your business. When looking to the z/OS environment it is unique in so many ways that we quickly realised that a generic solution just wasn&rsquo;t going to cut it. So within this offering, capabilities and execution environments have been developed specifically for the z/OS environment. Developed out of the Hursley lab we have been able to draw on resources and skill from established z/OS products such as CICS and IBM MQ to develop a solution that is tailored specifically for z/OS applications. The key requirement throughout the development process has been on keeping the impact of implementing a decision management as transparent as possible. Our focus has been to provide rule execution server environments with the smallest possible footprint and highest performance through to straightforward programming APIs that can easily be consumed by existing COBOL and PL/I developers.</p>
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This week we have announced the latest version of this family of products in <a href="http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&amp;infotype=an&amp;appname=iSource&amp;supplier=897&amp;letternum=ENUS214-147" target="_blank">IBM&nbsp;Operational&nbsp;Decision&nbsp;Manager&nbsp;v8.6</a> and <a href="http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&amp;infotype=an&amp;appname=iSource&amp;supplier=897&amp;letternum=ENUS214-137" target="_blank">IBM&nbsp;Operational&nbsp;Decision&nbsp;Manager&nbsp;v8.6&nbsp;for&nbsp;z/OS</a>. This new version provides an even more enhanced Decision Center environment for rules management and maintenance that allows for the possibility of the business teams themselves to actively take part in the decision lifecycle. For z/OS we have some exciting new developments to help you optimize your decision invocations from batch jobs as well as some new capabilities to help you keep track of what decision are being invoked.</p>
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If any of this has sparked and interest and you would like to hear more about it we have just published an ebook specifically on this topic which is available <a href="https://www.ibm.com/services/forms/signup.do?source=swg-NA_LMI&amp;S_PKG=ov23265" target="_blank">here</a>. Or if you would like a more personal introduction I would love to talk to you next week in Las Vegas at the IMPACT 2014 conference. Hope to see you there!</p>
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By Chris Backhouse,
IBM Operational Decision Manager for z/OS .
&nbsp;
So unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of months, I am sure you can&rsquo;t help but have...001409urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-084db777-99d5-40f8-9712-a737d75a85caZions Bancorporation maintains exceptional customer service as its business growsPratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-04-24T03:43:03-04:002014-04-24T03:43:03-04:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<img alt="image" src="https://www.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/CarolMarting.jpg" style=" display:block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" /></p>
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<strong>By Carol Marting, </strong></p>
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<strong>Client References Manager - IBM System z software</strong></p>
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Putting each customer at the heart of every transaction is one of the most powerful ways to drive loyalty in the retail-banking sector. For smaller organizations, this agility comes almost naturally &ndash; but as the business grows, how can large banks stay true to the grass-roots customer service that helped launch them to success?</p>
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Working with IBM, US-based bank Zions Bancorporation found the answer. By upgrading to an IBM&reg; zEnterprise&reg; BC12 server virtualized with IBM z/VM and running IBM CICS&reg; software, the company accelerated essential back-office processes by 33 percent. The high-performance solution enables the company to continue deliver exceptional front-line customer services as its business &ndash; and its core banking workload &ndash; grows.</p>
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To learn more about how IBM System z&reg; software is helping Zions Bancorporation to drive growth and ensure high-quality services without increasing IT headcount or operational costs, check out the IBM case study at: <a href="http://ibm.co/18orz7S">http://ibm.co/18orz7S</a></p>
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By Carol Marting,
Client References Manager - IBM System z software
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Putting each customer at the heart of every transaction is one of the most powerful ways to drive loyalty in the...001571urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-63287e33-ed9e-4550-9231-af161426a482It's a good day for good news...Announcing a new release of MQ for z/OS!Pratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-04-23T09:46:45-04:002014-04-23T09:48:55-04:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/LeifODaviden.jpg" style=" display:block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" /></p>
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<strong>By Leif Davidsen,</strong></p>
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<strong>Senior Product Manager - WebSphere Messaging Portfolio. </strong></p>
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There are some things that come around every day. Good things, like new business and new customers. Other daily occurrences are not so good, like hardware failures, network problems, or security fixes to apply. Then there are some things that come around much less frequently, but they are worth waiting for. Good days like when a new version of IBM MQ for z/OS is announced. Days like today &ndash; the 23<sup>rd</sup> of April 2014.</p>
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That&rsquo;s right. At IBM we are happy to announce IBM MQ V8. You can read the announcement letters here:</p>
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<a href="http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/7/897/ENUS214-177/index.html&amp;lang=en&amp;request_locale=en" target="_blank">Announcement&nbsp;letter&nbsp;for&nbsp;IBM&nbsp;MQ&nbsp;V8&nbsp;on&nbsp;distributed&nbsp;platforms</a>.</li>
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<a href="http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/0/897/ENUS214-180/index.html&amp;lang=en&amp;request_locale=en" target="_blank">Announcement&nbsp;letter&nbsp;for&nbsp;IBM&nbsp;MQ&nbsp;for&nbsp;z/OS&nbsp;V8</a>.</li>
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<a href="http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/6/897/ENUS214-176/index.html&amp;lang=en&amp;request_locale=en" target="_blank">Announcement&nbsp;letter&nbsp;for&nbsp;the&nbsp;various&nbsp;IBM&nbsp;MQ&nbsp;V8&nbsp;offerings&nbsp;on&nbsp;z/OS&nbsp;with&nbsp;a&nbsp;One&nbsp;Time&nbsp;Charge&nbsp;pricing&nbsp;metric</a>.</li>
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However for the rest of this entry let&rsquo;s concentrate on the new announcements for the z/OS platform.</p>
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There are a lot of new capabilities, and plenty of enhancements and improvements included in the announcements. At this point I will just call out a few of the high level items, and leave myself plenty of opportunity to come back on subsequent blogs and dive a little deeper into some of the new and improved areas.</p>
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Let&rsquo;s start with one of the changes that maybe either big or small depending on your perspective. We are starting, with this version, to call this product IBM MQ, as opposed to WebSphere MQ, mirroring a change you may have seen in some other products in recent years. After all MQ connects your entire infrastructure, so referring to it as IBM MQ rather than WebSphere MQ is perhaps more indicative of that breadth of coverage. It does of course continue to work with all the previous releases of WebSphere MQ, and in fact when you order it and install it, you will still see it as WebSphere MQ, but over time, expect changes in the product to reflect the new branding, while continuing to deliver the same robust messaging infrastructure.</p>
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So what else is new? Plenty of course has changed for the better, and many of the changes can be grouped as enhancements to boost both security and scalability, improving support for standards, and also doing more to exploit the hardware being used. These changes should reflect an overall improvement in the ease of use of IBM MQ in this release, simplifying configuration and reducing operational tasks.</p>
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From a security point of view, some of the key changes include the authentication of userids defined in the operating system. More changes include support for multiple certificate authorities in a single queue manager, and the use of DNS Hostnames in Channel Authentication Records.</p>
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From a scalability point of view there are enhancements, especially for publish-subscribe, including a change in the way clustering works for pub-sub. These changes in scalability are particularly designed to improve real-world scalability, rather than being tuned to demonstrate performance in confected examples.</p>
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Notable in new standards is support for JMS 2.0 with new messaging features and updates to the API.</p>
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For our customers using MQ on z/OS there are some particularly notable enhancements that offer new capabilities and exploit some of hardware updates likely to be available. There is support for 64 bit buffer pools, and a wider log Relative Byte Address as well as support for the zEDC compression and Coupling Facility Flash. Likely to be of real interest is the announcement that we have removed the Client Attachment Feature, meaning that there will no longer be a charge to connect MQ Clients on other platforms to MQ on z/OS. This applies from today, not just on MQ V8 but on WMQ V7.0.1 and V7.1 as well.</p>
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And also don&rsquo;t forget that on z/OS we not only have the standard Monthly License Charge way to purchase MQ, but also, for new workloads we have IBM MQ for z/OS Value Unit Edition, which provides the same product, but as a One Time Charge offering.</p>
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Other changes include MQ Advanced Message Security (AMS) is now more tightly integrated with MQ itself, meaning it is now installed and started with MQ for z/OS, although it still requires separate entitlement, or entitlement as a part of IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS V8. Also part of IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS, and separately is IBM MQ Managed File Transfer V8, allowing file contents to be moved as MQ messages, enabling file to file transfer, as well as file to message and message to file transfers.</p>
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Lots more detail to come so please come back for more, and hopefully I will see you at IBM Impact next week in fabulous Las Vegas, where I will aim to blog again with some more details of the enhancements to IBM MQ for z/OS V8</p>
&nbsp;
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&nbsp;
By Leif Davidsen,
Senior Product Manager - WebSphere Messaging Portfolio.
&nbsp;
There are some things that come around every day. Good things, like new business and new customers. Other...002007urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-3f6c37d0-a0af-488d-a949-53aa38a964c6Data: Imagine a world where you are a long-running transactionPratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-04-21T08:11:26-04:002014-04-21T08:14:20-04:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/BrianLang.jpg" style=" display:block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" /></p>
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<strong>By Brian Lang,</strong></p>
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<strong>Program Director - Enterprise Networking Solutions</strong>.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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The IBM Strategy as defined in the <a href="http://www.ibm.com/annualreport/2013/strategy.html">2013 Annual Report</a> is focused on three key items: Data. Cloud. Engagement.</p>
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I&rsquo;d like to take a few minutes and talk about data and really focus on how access to that data is important for one of our products: the <a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/products/en/commserver">IBM Communication Server</a>.</p>
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But first, there are some really mind-blowing statistics out there about data. Like 80+% of the data <em>that&#39;s ever been created </em>has been produced in the last five years. And that number is going to continue to rise. As IBM&rsquo;s CEO Ginni Rometty indicated, data is the new natural resource. So much of that data is now unstructured vs. structured, and yet it&#39;s a vast vein of potential just waiting to be tapped. Businesses that need to compete are working to figure out how to analyze data to make their own revenue. Businesses that started out brick-and-mortar and transitioned to e-business in the late &lsquo;90s are now looking to transition again, to tap into the data they have and the data they&#39;re gathering&mdash;every second of the day&mdash;to further their profitability.</p>
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Now consider Communication Server. From our web site: &ldquo;Communication Server is a family of scalable, high-performance servers that provide a communications gateway to the internet or company intranet. This comprehensive package of enterprise networking solutions enables connectivity across multiprotocol networks. Designed specifically to exchange information and data electronically, Communications Server is based on industry standards for a wide range of platforms.&rdquo;</p>
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In summary: Comm Server touches every transaction, every message, every query. For instance, every time someone needs data from the mainframe, we&#39;re involved. Why is that important? Well, in a world where more and more data is being created, where it&#39;s being accessed more readily, by more people, at any second of the day, then the conduit to that data needs to be reliable, secure and fast.</p>
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Now let&#39;s take a tiny step into the future. Let&#39;s pick two years. Many of you today can look down at your wrist and find a health tracker. Whether it&#39;s a Fitbit, Jawbone, GearFit or other, these little doo-dads are becoming all the rage. I&#39;ve begun looking into one for myself, but the technology is advancing at such a rapid pace that picking when to jump in and buy one is daunting. Will the one I pick be obsolete next week?</p>
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Heck, given the <a href="https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mobile/sportshack/">SportsHack at Impact 2014</a> that&rsquo;s focused on wearable tech, it&rsquo;s possible that what&rsquo;s coming out in a couple months will be obsolete as it hits the street!</p>
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But every time I look at the list of what&#39;s available, I find a list of others that are coming in the next couple of months with even more features. And what do those features do? They collect more data. They analyze that data and feed it back to the wearer. And two years from now, when almost everyone has one of these, the amount of data being collected, collated, analyzed, stored, etc. is going to be very large indeed. How important do you think that might be to a business that&#39;s looking to the future?Let me ask it this way. Today, 9 out of every 10 banks in the world use a mainframe. They keep information about you: your SSN, your account numbers, your transactions, your balance. Your money. An important part of your life. Now think about a company keeping a different set of information about you: your heart rate, your blood pressure, your location, your calorie intake. Where do we as consumers want that data to reside? Just anywhere, or somewhere where we can get to it reliably, quickly... and securely?</p>
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Let&#39;s take it a step further. Let&#39;s go 5+ years into the future. Consider, for example, Google Glass. There is quite a bit of controversy around this technology, but let&#39;s not kid ourselves. The technology is coming. Whether it&#39;s as bulky as these first sets of glasses or whether it advances to a point where the camera is as small as a pin (and therefore you can&#39;t really tell if the person you&#39;re interacting with is wearing it), it is a fascinating technology. Why take a few snapshots and load only the ones you like to your favorite social site when you can record an entire event and do the same? And why record just an event when you could record your entire day? And why stop at a day? You can see where this is headed. Let&#39;s assume that 5+ years down the road that Glass or something like it takes off. Now the data that&#39;s being recorded is streaming. You could, for instance, use these to record extended periods of your life. You want a scenario that will fill a 40GB pipe? That&#39;s one.</p>
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Now let&#39;s go further. Let&#39;s imagine a world where you&#39;re no longer wearing tech, it&#39;s embedded. Imagine a world where <strong>you</strong> are a long-running transaction. From the moment you embed the tech, you are connected, creating new data. Data that can be analyzed to help you live a healthier life, to keep you out of trouble, and undoubtedly to help you buy stuff. :-)&nbsp; So, you&#39;re a long running transaction, and along the way you&#39;re producing micro-transactions. And every one of those is a data point.</p>
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Consider it a Life Bank, full of your experiences, your interactions, your curiosities. Sound like transaction, messages and queries?</p>
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We as consumers want our SSN/account/money stored in a safe, secure, accessible location. We demand reliability and security. That&#39;s why 9 out of every 10 banks put their data on a mainframe, and why Comm Server dedicates so much investment in ensuring those consumer requirements are met. Now consider a Life Bank, where potentially every moment of your life is stored, accessible for you to pull out and view or share at your leisure. Crazy? Thirty years ago the idea of the Internet was likely crazy. If you can read the signs of where the technology is headed, then this path isn&#39;t that far-fetched. But to the question: if every moment of your life was available to you, where would you want that data stored?</p>
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The mainframe has so many advantages, be it a robust virtualization technology, the ability to provide enhanced analytics or its security features. And we&rsquo;re investing in new technology every day to ensure that wherever technology leads, the mainframe is capable of participating. Key new announcements such as zConnect will ensure access to your data when you need it.</p>
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The mainframe turned 50 years young last week, and one of the greatest quotes I heard was from Tom Rosamilia, the Senior Vice President of IBM Systems &amp; Technology Group. Tom said&mdash;and I&rsquo;m paraphrasing here&mdash;&ldquo;This isn&#39;t 50 year old technology. The technology you get in the hardware and software that shipped in 2013 is less than 18 months old.&quot; And so as we look at where technology is headed, and the type of data that technology will produce, and the requirements consumers and businesses will have on how that data can be analyzed and used, we must realize the very critical role the mainframe will have.</p>
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If data is the natural resource, then Comm Server is the pipeline to that resource.</p>
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By Brian Lang,
Program Director - Enterprise Networking Solutions .
&nbsp;
The IBM Strategy as defined in the 2013 Annual Report is focused on three key items: Data. Cloud. Engagement.
...002462urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-82aa08ed-8bcd-45da-aeb0-ff04f64c5917A new era CICS inPratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-04-18T07:58:14-04:002014-04-21T04:34:41-04:00<p dir="ltr">
<img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/JohnKnutson.jpg" style=" display:block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" /></p>
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<strong>By John Knutson,</strong></p>
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<strong>CICS - Market Enablement&nbsp; Team. </strong></p>
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Fifty years is a long time in anybody&rsquo;s money. While IBM was introducing the mainframe to an IT-innocent world, I was still at grammar school, reading too much science fiction and developing my love of jazz and blues. Forty-five years ago, when CICS first hit the streets, I&rsquo;d moved on to science fact &ndash; working as a computer operator &ndash; still listening to jazz and blues. It took another five years before our paths crossed and I was writing my first on-line CICS program in the days before any mapping support, basic or otherwise. Ten years later &ndash; give or take &ndash; I was working for IBM, helping to develop CICS on VM.</p>
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<a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/products/en/cics-tserver-zos" target="_blank">CICS&nbsp;Transaction&nbsp;Server&nbsp;for&nbsp;z/OS&nbsp;V5.2</a> was announced last week, on the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the mainframe <a href="https://twitter.com/Mainframe50" target="_blank">(#mainframe50</a>), and forty-five years after the first CICS release (#CICS@45). CICS has moved on a lot since my first CICS DOS/Entry system, with the new release adding an updated web container, integrated RESTful JSON support for mobile devices, more autonomics, new support for distributed security models, and more cloud support. I&rsquo;ll write more about <strong>why</strong> this new stuff is really valuable in another post here, but to learn more about <strong>how</strong> you can use it, you should connect with the CICS technical team over at <strong><a href="https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/cicsdev/tags/blog?lang=en" target="_blank">CICSdev</a></strong>. There&rsquo;s still time to try out the CICS TS V5.2 open beta or the CICS Transaction Gateway V9.1 open beta that was announced last week.</p>
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<a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/products/en/cics-ts-vue" target="_blank">CICS&nbsp;Transaction&nbsp;Server&nbsp;for&nbsp;z/OS&nbsp;Value&nbsp;Unit&nbsp;Edition&nbsp;V5.2</a> provides identical function with a one-time charge pricing model, ideal for new projects, or to web-, service- or mobile-enabling existing CICS applications. If you are not ready to commit to an upgrade, <a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/products/en/cics-ts-devtrial" target="_blank">CICS&nbsp;Transaction&nbsp;Server&nbsp;for&nbsp;z/OS&nbsp;Developer&nbsp;Trial&nbsp;V5.2</a> lets you experience the value of the latest CICS capabilities without obligation. With this latest release, you no longer need to reinstall the full product when moving from trial to production use. The <a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/products/en/cics-tools" target="_blank">CICS&nbsp;Tools</a> have also been <a href="http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=an&amp;subtype=ca&amp;supplier=897&amp;letternum=ENUS214-153" target="_blank">updated&nbsp;to&nbsp;V5.2</a>, helping you to maximise service agility, improve operational efficiency, cloud-enable your applications and infrastructure, in order to get the best from your CICS investments. I&rsquo;ll also write about the CICS Tools updates in a later post. You can learn more about all the CICS V5.2 updates at Impact later this month, so be sure to check out the CICS menus if you are planning to attend, and if you are not, there&rsquo;s still time to <a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/impact/" target="_blank">register</a>.</p>
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So much has changed. Many of the things I read and dreamed about as a boy have turned into reality: universal computer access, all-knowing search engines, the all-seeing eye, intelligent machines, and virtual currencies are all real now.</p>
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Some things haven&rsquo;t changed. While the mainframe is no longer the only player, along with CICS, IMS, and DB2, it continues to play an essential role, managing the systems of record of thousands of enterprises and organisations across the world, running transactions and accessing data, securely, reliably, and efficiently, 24/7/365, without fuss.</p>
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In my early days as a systems programmer, I used to think that 2000 transactions was a busy day. Now some CICS clients each daily exceed a billion. My first CICS programs used device-dependent control codes. Today developers can write standards-based programs, and then decide to deploy them to CICS. My first CICSgen is far removed from today&rsquo;s cloud deployment in CICS V5.2. With physical terminal connections, I <em>knew</em> who all of my users were. Today&rsquo;s CICS sysprogs can rely on Kerberos and SAML to identify their world-wide users.</p>
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Who knows what the next fifty years will bring. <strong>More</strong> and <strong>different</strong> should probably sum it up. What I do know is that CICS will be around to help. Oh yes, and I&rsquo;ll still be listening to jazz and blues. P<em>lus &ccedil;a change</em>, as the French say, so <em>bring it on!</em></p>
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By John Knutson,
CICS - Market Enablement&nbsp; Team.
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Fifty years is a long time in anybody&rsquo;s money. While IBM was introducing the mainframe to an IT-innocent...002043urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-414e8ac5-b4db-427d-95fd-ba552cc59635Whether it's a marriage or in business, you don't get to 50 without listening to your partnerPratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-04-16T09:12:16-04:002014-04-16T10:08:55-04:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/MikePerera.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="image" height="127" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/MikePerera.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" width="124" /></a></p>
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<strong>By Michael Perera,</strong></p>
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<strong>Vice President - CICS, TPF &amp; WebSphere System z</strong> .</p>
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I believe that Tony DiSanto, Citi, Global Head of Core Infrastructure Services, captured the spirit of the April 8th Mainframe50 anniversary event when he said: &quot;Whether it&#39;s a marriage or in business, you don&#39;t get to 50 without listening to your partner&quot;.&nbsp; I could not have worded it better.</p>
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For those of you who didn&#39;t join the LiveStream of the 50th anniversary event last week in New York City, I wanted to take a moment to share with you where you can see the replay - <b><a href="http://www.ibm.com/mainframe50/" target="_blank">http://www.ibm.com/mainframe50/</a></b>, and a transaction processing centric view of the day&#39;s events including the pre-event analyst briefing. &nbsp;</p>
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During the morning we covered our analytics, cloud and mobile strategy with the analysts.&nbsp; While transaction processing certainly has a role across cloud (for instance CICS 5.2 continues to deliver on the promise of efficiency and agility of cloud within a CICS environment, including multi-versioning support) and analytics (taking specific actions/routing of transactions based on analytics driven insight), the majority of the time covering transaction processing was really around how we easily extend our core subsystems for mobile which includes:</p>
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<span style="color:black;">The all new <strong>&nbsp;z/OS Connect</strong> capability shipping in WAS, CICS and IMS to more easily (and securely) connect mobile and cloud to the z/OS transaction processing subsystems.&nbsp; This is done using JSON via RESTful API&#39;s and enables clients to both identify and leverage reusable API&#39;s that are bullet proof and in many cases they have already been leveraging those services internally since the wave of Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) more than 10 years ago.&nbsp; Additionally z/OS Connect, particularly in conjunction with a secure gateway like DataPower, enables clients to quickly and easily support a hybrid environment where the mobile application may be built and run in the cloud, but accesses the transactional services that still run on premise.. introducing the marriage of BlueMix (running on Softlayer) and System z!&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></p>
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<strong><span style="color:black;">CICS 5.2</span></strong><span style="color:black;"> and the role native JSON support and multi-versioning of applications play in the rapidly changing world of mobile.&nbsp; We started on this journey with CICS 5.1 with the introduction of applications and platforms to enable clients (more specifically application developers, if so chosen) to rapidly provision and deprovision CICS programs while supported by policies that would make systems programmers comfortable that their system wouldn&#39;t come unknowingly crashing to its knees.&nbsp; Now, with multi-versioning clients can easily and efficiently manage the lifecycle of applications (mobile specific or otherwise).&nbsp; Additionally, native JSON support that integrates to mobile application development and run time platforms like <strong>Worklight</strong>&nbsp; enable clients to get everything installed, integrated and applications up and running in less than a week.</span></p>
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<span style="color:black;"><span style="color:black;">Finally, our <strong>new mobile pricing</strong> for z/OS which is an industry leading/first move to help clients provide their customers with a better experience while better aligning cost of computing with revenue they realize.&nbsp;&nbsp; With the new pricing, clients can apply up to 60% credit to their SMF/billing records for mobile workloads.&nbsp; This empowers clients to simplify and reuse their existing core infrastructure without needing to create more complicated and costly extensions such as caching.&nbsp;&nbsp; There&#39;s only one single version of the truth and for 80% of enterprise data, that originates or is stored on System z!&nbsp; </span></span></p>
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<span style="color:black;">The Mainframe50 &#39;main event&#39; where almost 500 people (mostly clients with about 30 analysts and another 30 from the press) attended live with more than 4,000 joining via LiveStream.&nbsp; Steve Mills covered the origins of z, Colleen Arnold covered Trusted Computing and why z is the most relevant platform, Tom Rosamilia covered all the new announcements, Pat Toole covered the academic initiative and announced the master the mainframe winners and John Kelly covered the future of z (including nano and quantum technology as well as cognitive computing.</span></p>
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<span style="color:black;">Mixed throughout the session were a number of </span><span style="color:black;"><a href="http://www.ibm.com/mainframe50/enginesofprogress/" target="_blank">Engines&nbsp;of&nbsp;Progress&nbsp;videos</a>&nbsp;(including&nbsp;Citi,&nbsp;Visa,&nbsp;Walmart,&nbsp;ICBC&nbsp;and&nbsp;Met&nbsp;Office) which spoke directly/indirectly about CICS, MQ, TPF, Lifeline and WAS which will continue to be added over the next couple of months.</span></p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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<span style="color:black;">In addition there were three clients who spoke about their existing relationship with IBM and the mainframe: </span></p>
<ul dir="ltr">
<li style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:black;"><strong>Citi </strong>- Highlighted TPF (12 years &amp; counting of continuous uptime), CICS (500 million transactions/day) &amp; MQ (1.8 million messages/day)</span></li>
<li style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:black;"><strong>Visa</strong> - Also highlighted TPF... 90 Billion transactions annually valued at $7 Trillion!!!</span></li>
<li style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:black;">Dontelle Harris and newly minted MetLife employee and North Carolina A&amp;T alumni spoke about his experience in learning the mainframe and how transformative it&#39;s been to him personally</span></li>
</ul>
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&nbsp;</p>
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<span style="color:black;">The event was wrapped up by a new IBM partnership, with Yale University and the country of Ghana, in an effort to reduce the spread of HIV from mothers to newborn children, which today is at 15% of the population and with a goal to be under 1% by 2020.</span></p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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<span style="color:#008080;">A few quotes to help paint the picture:</span></h3>
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&nbsp;</p>
<ul dir="ltr">
<li style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-autospace:none;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:black;">Citi - Highlighted TPF (12 years &amp; counting of continuous uptime), CICS (500 million transactions/day) &amp; MQ (1.8 million messages/day)</span></p>
</li>
<li style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-autospace:none;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:black;">Visa - Also highlighted TPF... 90 Billion transactions annually valued at $7 Trillion!!!</span></p>
</li>
<li style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-autospace:none;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:black;">Dontelle Harris and newly minted MetLife employee and North Carolina A&amp;T alumni spoke about his experience in learning the mainframe and how transformative it&#39;s been to him personally</span></p>
</li>
<li style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-autospace:none;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:black;">&quot;This is more than a 50th anniversary it&#39;s the beginning of a long journey transforming the world..&quot; Steve Mills, Senior VP and Group Executive Software &amp; Systems</span></p>
</li>
<li style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-autospace:none;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:black;">&quot;Go forth and embrace the new world of mobile without fear of the economics.....{The System z Mobile Workload Pricing is a} profound pricing change.&quot;&nbsp; Tom Rosamilia Senior Vice President Systems and Technology Group</span></p>
</li>
<li style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-autospace:none;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:black;">&quot;I expect 50 years from now our IBM partnership on the mainframe will continue&quot; Jim McCarthy, Visa, Global Head of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships</span></p>
</li>
<li style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-autospace:none;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:black;">&quot;If someone said &#39;we need to design the best system for big data, security, transactions, for where the world is going to be in the next decade and here&#39;s a clean sheet of paper. What system would you design?&#39; It would be exactly like the mainframe.&quot; John Kelly III, Sr. VP Research</span></p>
</li>
<li style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-autospace:none;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:black;">&quot;It&#39;s amazing how a simple academic competition could really change my life... this stuff (mainframe programming) is easy!&quot; Dontrell Harris, MetLife </span></p>
</li>
<li style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-autospace:none;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:black;">&quot;Imagine, an AIDS free generation [in Ghana]!...This (moment) is only the beginning of the mainframe &quot;, Dr Elijah Paintsil, Yale</span></p>
</li>
</ul>
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&nbsp;</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
All in all, something for all of us to be VERY proud of as we&#39;ve all had a piece in making history that spanned the last 50 years and more importantly are continuing to look to the future, innovate and build the foundation for the next 50 years.<span style="color:#800080;">&nbsp;</span> <strong>Happy Birthday System z !!!</strong></p>
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
By Michael Perera,
Vice President - CICS, TPF &amp; WebSphere System z .
&nbsp;
I believe that Tony DiSanto, Citi, Global Head of Core Infrastructure Services, captured the spirit of the...002373urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-82bb166e-fe18-45d1-8ffb-5fea154f07f6System z at Impact 2014 - "We're in! Are you?"Pratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-04-11T07:46:14-04:002014-04-11T09:00:05-04:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/JeffSummers.jpg" style=" display:block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" /></p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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<strong>By Jeff Summers, </strong></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<strong>Market Manager - WebSphere on System z .&nbsp; </strong></p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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The Impact 2014 conference is just around the corner, April 27th - May 1st at The Ventian in Las Vegas, and the System z team is planning a set of activities and events worthy of a celebration.&nbsp; The Impact conference is <strong>THE </strong>place to meet with IBM experts, business partners, and clients to gain insights into the latest happenings in IBM software.&nbsp; And this year the Impact conference has even more to offer on System z than ever before.<br />
<br />
Some of the highlights of <a href="http://ibm.co/zimpact" target="_blank">System&nbsp;z&nbsp;at&nbsp;Impact&nbsp;2014</a> include:</p>
<ul dir="ltr">
<li style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-autospace:none;">
<strong><span style="color:black;">A full z curriculum</span></strong><span style="color:black;">: There are more than 100 z related <a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/impact/sessions.html" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:none;"><span style="color:blue;">sessions</span></span></a>, including lectures, labs, panels and meet the experts sessions across all of the tracks at Impact such as Cloud, Mobile and Application Infrastructure.&nbsp; <em>Want to know how to extend existing CICS applications out to a mobile device?</em>&nbsp; We&#39;ve got that for you!&nbsp; <em>Want a deep dive on MQ or WebSphere Application Server on z/OS?</em> &nbsp;You&#39;ve come to the right place!&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <em>Want to tune your Java performance on z?</em>You will find the experts you need!&nbsp; </span></li>
<li style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-autospace:none;">
<span 1-on-1="" :="" a="" across="" agenda="" and="" application="" are="" as="" by="" capabilities="" daily="" demonstrations="" designed="" detailed="" discussions="" experts="" feature="" for="" from="" full="" guided="" href="http://www.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/impact/suite.html" http:="" in="" in-depth="" lab="" latest="" learn="" led="" li="" lunch="" mainframe50="" manage="" matter="" meet="" miss="" mobile="" modernize="" monday="" n="" new="" of="" on="" opportunity="" portfolio="" reserve="" run="" scenario="" session="" sessions="" software="" solution="" solution.="" solutions="" soon="" span="" style="color:black: The Sunday evening opening of the Solution EXPO will feature System z, z software solutions and the &lt;a data-cke-saved-href=" subject="" suite="" system="" t="" target="_blank" technical="" the="" this="" through="" to="" usage="" walk="" well="" will="" with="" www.ibm.com="" year="" you="" your="" z="" zone=""><strong><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:none;"><span style="color:blue;">Mainframe50</span></span> anniversary.</strong>&nbsp; Be sure to stop by the z Zone Sunday evening and throughout the week to speak with IBM experts and enjoy some fun and networking at the same time.</span></li>
<li style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-autospace:none;">
<span style="color:black;"><strong>System z Client Reception:</strong> <a href="http://www.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/impact/reception.html" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:none;text-underline:none;"><span style="color:blue;">Register</span></span></a> for the Monday night client reception at the Tao in the Venitian, offering a unique networking opportunity with IBM executives as well as other System z clients.&nbsp; The formal education at Impact is only part of the experience, it&#39;s also the networking and impromptu discussions that complete the Impact experience.</span></li>
</ul>
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&nbsp;</p>
<p dir="ltr">
At the Impact 2014 conference there is something for everyone regardless of role or experience level, from C-level executive to experienced system programmer to new to the platform mobile developer.&nbsp; So join us at Impact 2014 and learn something new about the value System z.&nbsp; In fact, I think some of our brightest developers say it best in this video....&quot;<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu9e8U2s2W8" target="_blank">We&#39;re&nbsp;in!&nbsp;&nbsp;Are&nbsp;you?</a>&quot;</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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Register for impact at: <a href="http://www.ibm.com/impact" target="_blank">http://www.ibm.com/impact</a>.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
&nbsp;
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&nbsp;
&nbsp;
By Jeff Summers,
Market Manager - WebSphere on System z .&nbsp;
&nbsp;
The Impact 2014 conference is just around the corner, April 27th - May 1st at The Ventian in Las Vegas, and the...001011urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entry-6d36e846-19d0-486a-9afe-ea0b1314d8fd“You can do mobile on a mainframe? Really? Show me.”Pratin Ashtekarpratinashtekar@in.ibm.com2700046SAGactiveComment Entriesapplication/atom+xml;type=entryLikes2014-03-03T07:55:05-05:002014-03-06T02:29:06-05:00<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<img alt="image" height="153" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/RichardGamblin.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" width="121" /></p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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<strong>By Richard Gamblin</strong></p>
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<strong>Software Architect WebSphere, Mobile, SmarterPlanet </strong></p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<strong>and System z Software. </strong></p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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This comment, from the Chief Technology Officer of one of my largest clients, is one that I hear a lot just now. My clients seem genuinely surprised that not only <em>can</em> you deliver a mobile infrastructure on an IBM System z mainframe server, but that there are terrific reasons why the mainframe is the perfect place for mobile.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
First, let&rsquo;s think why mobile is in the minds of so many business and community leaders. Providing a mobile face to your organization is not as simple as adding a new channel. Mobile technologies are a disruptive influence on current business practices and are fundamental to how organizations operate today.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
How does IBM System z fit? And why should the underlying hardware platform for mobile even matter? Before we get to that, let&rsquo;s look at three important characteristics for a mobile service and think about the role that the hardware platform can play.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
<h3 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:#008080;">Three characteristics of a successful mobile service</span></h3>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
Remember, I&rsquo;m not talking about the beautifully designed, easy-to-navigate user experience from the mobile app. This is all about the <em>service</em> that feeds the app with all of the information for it to become a necessity, rather than just another app.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">
<strong>Access whenever and wherever I want.</strong></li>
</ol>
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One of most commonly quoted statistics that I&rsquo;ve seen is that over 90% of smartphones users keep their phones within arms reach 24 hours a day. And we check those smartphones up to 150 times each day! (Wow! That&rsquo;s a lot!) These statistics are reflected by the conversations I have with clients and colleagues. Banks observe a peak at 2 a.m. on Friday, or tax returns are completed between 11 a.m. and midnight on 25 December here in the UK.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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So, if the mobile service becomes unavailable, even well outside traditional working hours, it can impact your business.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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<li style="text-align: justify;" value="2">
<strong>Learn about me; personalize my service. <a href="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/personalizemyservice.png" target="_blank"><img alt="image" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/personalizemyservice.jpg" style=" width:200px; display:block; margin: 1em 0pt 0pt 1em; float: right;" /></a></strong></li>
</ol>
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A <a href="http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/42903.wss" target="_blank">recent&nbsp;study</a> , released at the 2014 National Retail Federation conference, revealed that many of us are happy to share our personal preferences but only as long as we can get a better deal. That better deal might be a discount voucher from a retailer, a holiday insurance offer from an underwriter, or a last-minute reduced airfare from an airline company. Ultimately, mobile channels provide marketing teams a terrific opportunity to push out notifications based on personal preferences that have the potential to overwhelm a mobile service. Just think about the <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/42661.wss" target="_blank">phenomenal&nbsp;growth&nbsp;observed</a> in mobile traffic during Cyber Monday.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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Again, let&rsquo;s consider the implications here. If you offer an ultra-brief marketing campaign to boost the sales of a particular product, the underlying mobile service needs to handle a potential surge of new business.&nbsp;</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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<li style="text-align: justify;" value="3">
<strong>Store my information, but protect it with your reputation.</strong></li>
</ol>
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As a consumer, it&rsquo;s wonderfully convenient not to have to keep entering credit card details, email addresses, and postal addresses. The only way to do this is to trust the organization to protect your identity and personal details. There has been a recent spate of unfortunate examples of where the security processes have fallen down, and the reputation of the organization has suffered as a result. There are some scenarios where this security issue might seem less important, such as the rewards of a coffee chain. However, when we think about an app for government or banking, security is critical.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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In this case, we need to think about the mechanisms that sit within, and beyond, the mobile service that give organizations and consumers the confidence to do business through mobile channels.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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Ok, now let&rsquo;s revisit our two earlier questions:</p>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">
Why does hardware platform matter?</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">
And why is IBM System z relevant?</li>
</ul>
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&nbsp;</p>
<h3 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:#008080;">Why does the hardware platform matter?</span></h3>
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My observations about the characteristics of a successful mobile service should give a few clues about the importance of the underlying hardware platform. There will be a direct impact unless the mobile platform:</p>
<ol dir="ltr">
<li style="text-align: justify;">
Is always available, all day, every day</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">
Can handle surges in traffic</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">
Can be supremely securable</li>
</ol>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
So, the hardware platform needed to deliver these levels of service must meet or exceed these requirements. Enter the mainframe. The IBM System z mainframe is designed and optimized to excel at these characteristics and to deliver a reliable, scalable, and secure service. As such, it is a natural fit for the requirements of a mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP), such as IBM Worklight.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
<h3 dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color:#008080;">Why mobile on IBM System z?</span></h3>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
But wait; can&rsquo;t these things be done on other hardware platforms? Build a responsive system that is always available? That adopts a scalable infrastructure? And one that securely delivers a mobile service without compromising the integrity of the business?</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
Indeed they can. <a href="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/WhymobileonSystemz.png" target="_blank"><img alt="image" height="225" src="https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/resource/BLOGS_UPLOADED_IMAGES/WhymobileonSystemz.png" style="display: block; margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; float: left;" width="176" /></a>However it is a matter of cost. In some cases, where the business or mobile service needs it, the economic argument for deploying a mobile service on IBM System z is unbeatable.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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One aspect that is often overlooked is that, because mainframes are designed from the ground up to provide shared application and data services, they can innately provide the qualities of service necessary for an ultra-reliable, scalable, and secure service.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
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Let&rsquo;s take a couple of examples.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
Suppose the mobile service needs to be ultra-reliable. You need to protect against hardware failure, loss of a network, issues with the operating system, and the application server that provides the mobile service. To do that, you typically duplicate each of these components and have multiple environments to acquire, operate, and replace after a period of time. Depending on how important your app is, all of this might be duplicated <em>again</em> in another region. All of this redundancy is built into the IBM System z platform.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
Perhaps it can still be more cost effective to build out this manually. Let&rsquo;s think about the scalable aspect to this. Suppose you are establishing a new mobile service. You don&rsquo;t yet know how successful this new service is going to be. Ideally, it will be wildly successful, although it&rsquo;s tricky to anticipate whether you will need to double or triple the hardware requirements next week, next month, or next year. On many systems, this planning would involve ordering and fulfilling additional hardware and staging the roll out of new environments, which may become larger and more challenging to manage. On the IBM System z platform, additional processing and memory resources can be activated to dynamically meet the requirements with no loss of the end service.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
These two examples illustrate how a multitude of factors can contribute the economic argument for delivering a scalable, reliable, and secure hardware platform to underpin a mobile service.</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
&nbsp;</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
These kinds of discussions are going on in many organizations around the world. To get some idea of the interest in this topic, IBM has recently released an <a href="http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp5088.html?Open" target="_blank">IBM&nbsp;Redbooks&nbsp;Point&nbsp;of&nbsp;View&nbsp;publication</a> about mobile on IBM System z. For a mobile solution overview with an IBM System z at the core there is also a brand new <a href="http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips1162.html?Open" target="_blank">IBM&nbsp;Redbooks&nbsp;Solution&nbsp;Guide</a> . In addition, IBM will shortly publish a follow-on IBM Redbooks Design Guide publication, which explore this topic much more extensively.</p>
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&nbsp;</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: justify;">
Are you surprised by the case for mobile on IBM System z? Let me know what you think about betting your mobile enterprise application platform on IBM System z.</p>
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By Richard Gamblin
Software Architect WebSphere, Mobile, SmarterPlanet
and System z Software.
&nbsp;
This comment, from the Chief Technology Officer of one of my...005823urn:lsid:ibm.com:blogs:entries-b1aaaa63-055a-4eee-bffd-c1c476eefda3IBM Mainframe Insights2015-03-04T07:17:10-05:00